Music Magazines

Purpose & Conventions

 

Music magazine are magazine dedicated to music and music culture. Such magazines typically include music news, interviews, photo shoots, essays, record reviews and concert reviews. In order for music magazines to sell successfully, they need a well-known institution to sign them. A media institution is an establishment that is in charge of distributing, marketing and producing different media products.

A music magazine that I found was similar to my magazine’s genre was VIBE. Through some research that I found out was that Vibe magazine is currently owned by InterMedia Partners. InterMedia also own other companies such as WAPA-TV, which is a radio station, but have mainly been successful through media institutions. They distribute their magazines though their online website which provides some articles from the magazine. Also the magazines gets distributed to a variety of shops ranging from corner shops to supermarkets.

From research that I have done music magazines are one of the most magazine read and the first thing that attracts the reader is who is on the front cover. The Main Image dominates the page.  Most front cover images are positioned in front of the masthead, which could show that most readers don’t need to see the full masthead because it’s so popular that they already know which magazine it is. The artists are pictures starting straight at the camera as well as the readers, who are addressed directly.

Although music magazines do have a high expectation to entertain their reader, they do also follow the basic conventions such as numbering their pages. The date, barcode and price are all displayed usually on the front pages even thing they are minor features, they are still important parts of the magazine as it informs their readers.

The mastheads of most music magazines are bold colors and large font, to grab the audience’s attention. From research that I have made mastheads are supposed to be simple and positioned at the top 1/3 of the page, makes it visible from far away.

Every music magazine main cover line corresponds to the main image. The use of bold font is to help the colors stands out against the background. The main cover line is easily noticed as it’s the second biggest text after the masthead, which catches it’s targeted reader’s eyes. Not only this, but an unlikely quote from the article's interview is usually put in been put on the cover, which also interests the reader.

The front cover’s color scheme would usually depend what genre of music the magazine is advertising as well as who the targeted audience. For example the colors used in a magazine which is aimed at men would be stereotypically masculine colors; therefore colors which are associated with men are blue, green, black, red and. stereotypically feminine colors are targeted more at female background market: pink, yellow, purple, light orange and more. Puffs and cover lines will always be put in empty spaces or negative spaces. To make the front cover look more interesting without giving too much information, these puffs and cover lines are put anywhere other than on the artist’s faces. The larger the puffs or cover lines, the more the magazine is trying to tell its readers that its important and would probably be it’s the main article or story. Some magazines are laid out to be balanced, so if there was a large text on one side of the magazine it would be balanced out on the other side with a graphic feature. You wouldn’t fill one side with lots of text and leave the other side empty. Puffs and cover lines have been specifically chosen to draw your attention to the magazine to make you want to purchase it.

The language helps grab the attention of the audiences, for example naming it the ‘UK’S best-selling’ would attract attention of those interested and it’s obvious the audience would want something that is well-known and worth paying for.